Word.ws English Dictionary

throat-clearing

throat-clearing noun: a forcible, sometimes muted, expulsion of air from one's lungs, sometimes to clear mucus, sometimes to attract attention to something; less vigorous than a cough. Also the alternative form of clearing one's throat.

Noun

throat-clearing

  1. A forcible, sometimes muted, expulsion of air from one's lungs, sometimes to clear mucus, sometimes to attract attention to something; less vigorous than a cough.
    • Colds, with their subsequent sneezing, coughing, hemming, nose-blowing, and throat-clearing, begin to be the order of the day, with the ushering in of cold and damp November days.1887, James Thomas Casefirst2=John Harvey, Kellogg, Health Reformer: Volume 22, page 327
  2. (idiomatic) A performative or formal preamble before a statement.
    • This is a comic poem—an exercise in throat-clearing, or a cranking up of the speech organs: […]1970, The University of Michigan, Research in African Literatures: Volume 32
    • A quick review of existing national-state preambles […] quickly reveals a formulaic sameness in what one could call preamble language […] little more than a bit of performative throat-clearing in preparation for the serious work of the articles in the body of the constitution itself.2009, Max Pensky, The Ends of Solidarity: Discourse Theory in Ethics and Politics, page 130

Also used as

throat-clearing is also the alternative form of clearing one's throat.

Questions about throat-clearing

What does throat-clearing mean?
Throat-clearing means a forcible, sometimes muted, expulsion of air from one's lungs, sometimes to clear mucus, sometimes to attract attention to something; less vigorous than a cough.
What part of speech is throat-clearing?
Throat-clearing is a noun.

Words near throat-clearing in the dictionary

  1. throat sweets
  2. throat-boll
  3. throat-bolls
  4. throat-bolt
  5. throat-bolts
  6. throat-clearing
  7. throat-deep
  8. throat-strap
  9. throat-straps
  10. throatache
  11. throataches

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: throat-clearing (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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